DANIEL TOSSOUNIAN -- Community Commentary

Recently, while taking a leisurely walk by the Huntington Beach Pier, I

noticed a modern swing band on the adjacent concert grounds belting out a

hit parade of toe-stomping tunes to which a casually assembled crowd was

responding with demonstrable delight.

The thing that particularly caught my eye was the veritable horde of

young swing dancers who had claimed one of the stadium terraces for their

own and were jitterbugging away with a joie de vivre that would have done

their grandparents proud -- and that was just it.

These young folks I saw jumping, jamming and jiving were confirmed Gen

X-ers, not a one seemed over 30.

They had to know that those hip dance steps they were executing so

adroitly were pioneered by a generation of people at least two times

removed from them, those whom social commentators like Studs Terkel have

classified as the War Generation.

As a baby boomer, I had a special appreciation for this seemingly ironic

situation. I mean, who could have known that my parents’ music could be

so hip, even, dare I say, cool?

I mean they were the quintessential squares right? The ones who told us

to be home by 11 p.m. with the Ford and outlawed pot just to spite us.

Arty Shaw, Benny Goodman, Glen Miller? Gimme a break!

But there I was with everyone else, humming “Beat me daddy, eight to the

bar” as the band cut loose. When they played “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” I

was almost tempted to forget myself, grab a partner and join in with the

swingers -- notwithstanding my considerable prestidigitation

shortcomings.

I had to concede, in spite of my entrenched generational prejudice, that

this music was indeed the very essence of cool. It made me appreciate

anew the generation which Tom Brokaw, in his recent book “The Greatest

Generation,” has proclaimed the greatest generation of Americans who ever

lived.

Having grown up in the harsh fulcrum of the Great Depression, they rolled

up their sleeves and were thankful to take whatever work they could get.

When Hitler threatened the freedom of all people everywhere, they rolled

their sleeves with a different resolve and pummeled those criminal

empires until they were nothing but bad memories.

And that wasn’t enough. They had enough fight left to take on a Cold War

as well, and win it. They rebuilt the post World War II economy, not only

of America, but Europe and Asia, to such a degree that the unprecedented

economic boom of that era is still looked upon by historians and

economists as a golden age of American influence.

Scientific innovations, with their resulting practical applications, grew

at an almost exponential rate, culminating in the sublime achievement of

the moon landings, and, yes, the darker specter of nuclear war.

The civil rights movement of the early 1960s, although ostensibly

conducted by a militant young army of social agitators, was nevertheless

given its impetus by a forward-looking Supreme Court of the ‘50s and

later by a presidential administration in the ‘60s, which recognized that

some of the values we had inherited from our forefathers were not only

immoral but unconstitutional.

In the arts, this generation gave us Buddy Rich, drummer extraordinaire;

the suave crooning of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra; and Mr. Cool

himself, Robert Mitchum. And if all this weren’t enough, they gave us

swing dancing!

To a baby boomer like me, who prided himself on being more or less part

of the hip Woodstock generation, this realization was becoming downright

disconcerting. Turns out we didn’t invent cool at Woodstock. We just

repackaged it.

Well, at least we baby boomers are more in touch with our feelings. We’ve

still got that -- right?

* DANIEL TOSSOUNIAN works as a graduate student intern at KOCE in

Huntington Beach.